


If you're searching for us, you'll find us side by side

by the_inner_darkness



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: ;D, A Little Fall of Rain, A lil' something to cheer y'all up, Angst, Break Up, Car Accidents, Down windows and cheeks, Funerals, Hospitals, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Kageyama Tobio is Bad at Feelings, M/M, Post-Break Up, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22629535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_inner_darkness/pseuds/the_inner_darkness
Summary: Kageyama winced, his lungs starting to burn as he remembers the smoke inside. He parted his lips, letting it flow out past his teeth and up, enough to block the sun from his eyes. Kageyama turned away, biting back tears as he brought his cigarette to touch against his lips. He pinched it there, letting more smoke drift into his lungs. His eyes flickered to the parking lot in front of him, and he could see people getting into their cars, all dressed in black, like a shadow had pressed its gentle lips to everyone.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	If you're searching for us, you'll find us side by side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [an_orchideous_life](https://archiveofourown.org/users/an_orchideous_life/gifts).



> Here's to failing finals and writing angst instead.
> 
> (An old lil' something I had lying around from when I was obsessed with kagehina)

Kageyama tasted something like bitterness at the back of his throat.

He's standing in a suit, and it's uncomfortable. It's tight in all the wrong places, it's hard to move in, and it's tight.

It's not like his entire body felt like it was clenching, tearing itself apart anyways.

Kageyama leaned back against the hard plaster of the wall, his head tipping back just enough so that it rested behind him. His eyes fluttered closed, his chest stuttering out of time. Fingertips curling, his hand form a fist, knuckles pressing hard into his thigh through the fabric of his dress pants.

_Too soon._

He winced at the words in his head, his other arm bending at the elbow to bring a cigarette to his lips. The warmth seeps through his tongue, washes down to his lungs as he inhales a cloud of smoke.

Kageyama's eyelashes slowly rose, his eyes drawing up so high. He could see the sun laughing above him, setting fire to the sky, flickering out waves of heat and light.

He felt sick.

The rays swept across his skin, reminding him of bright orange hair and light eyes and sparkling smiles, strong legs and the blur of a body.

Kageyama winced again, his lungs starting to burn as he remembers the smoke inside. He parted his lips, letting it flow out past his teeth and up, enough to block the sun from his eyes. Kageyama turned away, biting back tears as he brought his cigarette to touch against his lips. He pinched it there, letting more smoke drift into his lungs. His eyes flickered to the parking lot in front of him, and he could see people getting into their cars, all dressed in black, like a shadow had pressed its gentle lips to everyone. 

A shadow that the sun hadn't managed to scare away.

When Kageyama saw the Hinata family drive away, he felt ready to cry.

* * *

He'd never been one for the outdoors.

But there were times that Hinata could manage to pull him outside, managed to get him to lay with him, just long enough. 

There was a day where the sun was so bright, and Kageyama couldn't help but think that it was Hinata that was causing it, that he was pulling all the light from the sky. They were laying on the ground, the grass underneath them pressing into their backs and their legs. And for once, Kageyama wasn't thinking of what insects could be underneath him, but about was the boy beside him. A shuddering breath drew itself into his chest, shaking Hinata's head that was resting against it. Kageyama's arms were circled around his small waist, pulling him close enough to press all the skin they could find together.

The sun was falling down on them, like he'd remembered, but it all seemed to focus on Hinata. He didn't understand why, or maybe he did. Maybe it was because he was the one who deserved the light, maybe he was the light. It was framing his cheekbones, flickering across the skin, across his lips, and it sat just for a moment on the one eyelash that was on his cheek. His hair was bright, it was so bright, and he seemed to be absorbing the rays. He was glowing.

He looked so perfect that Kageyama wanted to turn away.

"You're just like a star, Kageyama."

He saw the words more than he heard them. Kageyama was so focused on Hinata's face that he just saw the gentle movements of his lips, his words meeting his ears quietly.

"You always tell me I'm like the sun but the sun is a star too." He turned his head slightly to press his forehead into Kageyama's chest, his lips pushing forward to press a soft kiss through the material of his shirt.

"And I think you shine brighter than I do."

_You're wrong, you're wrong, you're wrong,_ Kageyama thought, his own eyes closing and his fingers tracing circles onto Hinata's back.

* * *

Hinata would always look at Kageyama like he was all that would exist. It's heartbeat times like those, flickers of time in the void of space that seem to make him so happy that it's painful. Heartbeat moments like those where they were facing each other and their noses are hooked and Kageyama can feel the warm breath of Hinata sweep across his skin as he exhales, where he can feel the skin of his fingertips dig into Hinata and just hold him there, feeling free enough just to let his touch flicker across the other boy's body and trace everything like he's graphing it. Where he's counting the syllables of his entire name and comparing them to his heartbeat, and he can't help but feel like they're static waves in the air that somehow found the same line as each other. 

He could feel Hinata, sense the curling lips and the bent knees and the way his head bobbed on his shoulder when he picked him up and walked. He was part of Kageyama, he was washed across all of him and engraved into the whirls of his fingerprints and the grooves of his skin and the gaps between his ankles. He was part of Kageyama, eyes locked onto his own in soft fondness and gentle hands moving their fingers across the skin of Kageyama's cheeks.

He felt so locked in affection, so trapped in the gentle breaths of being loved that he could feel his heart beat faster and terrify the rush of his blood. Because Hinata loved him, he loved him so much, and Kageyama loved him too but he was afraid he didn't love him enough. He was afraid that something beautiful like Hinata, all pretty smiles and bouncing hair and soft kisses, deserved so much more than he could give, and it wasn't fair to either of them. He absolutely loathed the fear that scratched at his ribs every time his heart thundered, hated the feeling that he wasn't doing something right and he wasn't good enough and that there could stand someone else in the world who deserved the fiery boy in his arms more than he did.

All he could see was the form of the boy with the orange hair, his knees pulled up and his forehead pressed to his thighs. He was small, smaller than he was when he was standing, and you could almost overlook him. But Kageyama couldn't, couldn't ever look over Hinata because Hinata was blaring, he was the aftershock behind your eyelids when you glanced at brightness. Hinata's shoulders were shaking beneath his shirt, his ankles crossed under his curled legs, and Kageyama didn't know what to do or why this was happening or what was making Hinata cry.

Kageyama had never known this Hinata, had never known the one whose light was seeming to flicker, because all along he'd thought that tears could evaporate on the sun's surface. And the only thing he could think of that could possibly make him okay was something he couldn't do, was something that was always on his tongue and bouncing between the insides of his cheeks and he liked to think that Hinata could hear it in the cigarette smoke that flooded from his nose but he couldn't, he couldn't because his lips and heart froze around _I love you._ It made Kageyama push himself into a fenced in area of full panic, making him distraught from every vein in his body that maybe he really wasn't good enough.

Maybe it was the inane fear that Hinata would leave just as soon as Kageyama came to terms with himself, maybe it was the tantrum that his mind threw every time it crossed the memories of slamming doors and empty houses and hands through hair and desperate kisses of reconciling, but Kageyama couldn't do it. He couldn't say the three words that would make the sun even brighter, that would make the wind whisper to everything and hold him close and tell him he was alright. He couldn't do it.

And as his steel-tinted blue eyes traced the silhouette of the crying boy in front of him, Kageyama wondered why Hinata had chosen him.

* * *

It'd been months and it was becoming too much.

It constantly consumed Kageyama, pounding like tumultuous waves in his skull, the hindering thought, you're not good enough, you're not good enough, you're not good enough.

It'd been months and he still couldn't pull a small confession from his lips, the very lips that had touched Hinata's over and over again, and it felt so wrong. He could get his heart to make its way between his mouth and he couldn't pull the other's frame into his own without wondering how many have done the same thing, and how many have had the courage to tell him that they loved him. 

Hinata was a lucky thing, he was one of those people that made you fortunate just to walk by. He was like the way people lit their cigarettes; the way they'd cup the fire at the end of their lighter just to make sure that the wind wouldn't steal the flame away.

But Kageyama felt like he was letting air slip through the cracks of his fingers.

And it was then, when they were both standing in a storm and staring at each other, that Kageyama could see the sun start to dim.

"What are you saying?"

The stutter in his voice was in time with the way Kageyama's heart skipped a beat. His dark hair was being pelted to his forehead under the rain, and he could see the orange turn into rust and fall into Hinata's eyes, the other boy's hands clenched at his sides like he did when he was about to say something defiant but Kageyama knew that he wouldn't.

For a moment, he was reminded of the boy crying, curled into himself on the floor.

"I'm saying I can't be with you anymore."

Hinata was silent for a moment, before his fingers unfurled and laid beside his thighs. His shoulders seemed to drop, and the sun behind the clouds seemed to drop with them.

"You said we'd last."

Kageyama parted his lips, his eyes closing and opening as he struggled to piece together a sentence.

"You're everything I want, but everything I don't deserve. And I don't think that's fair to either of us."

Hinata's brown eyes washed over him, the warm color roping him in and pushing him inside until he couldn't breathe. He could see the determination that was always there, but now it was just background noise to the hurt at the surface. He started to shake his head, his limp orange hair shades darker under the relentless raindrops. Eyes still locked on Kageyama, Hinata turned away, everything moving from him except his gaze. The moment his eyes departed, he shoved one foot in front of the other, sending a puddle into disarray as he began to walk away.

* * *

As soon as he heard _Hinata Shouyou_ and _intensive care unit_ and _it won't be long_ in the same sentence, everything left Kageyama. All the thoughts that were constantly pounding against his insides ran dry, all five thousand worries burning into one that had always been there.

It'd been months, and the months turned to years, with no contact except the way the sunlight parted the curtains in the morning and it always made him think of the red hair that tickled his nose when they stood together. It wasn't just that memory alone, but it was all of them, they were all stabbing pain in his back that just burned with touches of light skin and hazel eyes and springing jumps and strong determination. 

Kageyama had turned away from the phone that was pressed to his ear, tears falling hard and car keys already in his hand.

He'd always told him to be careful. He'd always told him to slow down, to stop trying to work himself to death, but he didn't ever think it'd be literal. It was all too fast now.

* * *

He stood at the foot of Hinata's hospital bed.

He'd always been small, but at times like this, he almost looked like a sleeping child. His eyelashes were framing his cheekbones, patterned across his skin. His pink lips were parted slightly, just enough to let wisps of air pull through and push out. There was a tube under his nose, and there were needles pushed through the skin of the crook of his elbow, weaving through the empty spaces with enough strings to make him look like a marionette. Monitors were plastered to the walls all over the room, and there were graphs and tests charts and it all hurt to look at. 

Kageyama gripped the metal rungs at the end of the cot between his long fingers, his skin pulled taut over his knuckles as his eyes closed. He laughed, short and sharp and bitter as he felt something hot grip at his rib cage. He shook his head at himself, his mouth twisting from the straight line that he'd always taught himself to keep. 

It was then that he first said it, first said it back to Hinata.

"I love you."

He couldn't hear him, he knew he couldn't hear him, and it made him feel like a criminal.

Kageyama turned away, his chin dropping to his chest as his ears caught the hollow sound of the rain outside.

_The sun hasn't shone for days._

* * *

Kageyama was still leaning against the wall in his suit. His tie felt so tight around his neck, and he could almost remember the faint beeping of the heart monitor beside Hinata's bed that turned into a single long note.

He brought the cigarette back to touch the skin of his lips again, mouth pursed slightly as he dragged in a heavy breath of smoke. He felt it travel down his throat, waving hello to the sadness that sat in his chest as it rushed down to fill his lungs. He kept it there for a good long moment, waiting for the sting and the frantic beating of his heart that said _let it out, let it out._ He liked the feeling of playing with the smoke, liked the feeling of touching fire to his lips.

Because maybe just for that one moment, he could pretend he was kissing Hinata again.

The photograph and the small black ring box he'd had for years beside the closed casket was in the corner of the room that he'd closed the door to, and even when he blinked, he could see the picture. The picture of him, and all he could taste wasn't the smoke, but the curving lips and the bright eyes and the hair that he used to pat down when he could. There was a small giant hole in his chest and he was desperate, desperate for the chance to undo the walking away and the fright of loving someone back.

Every time Kageyama closes his eyes, it's bright behind his eyelids, like he's just been staring at the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> For an_orchideous_life, so that you can skip the small things like finals and focus on what's really important. ;D


End file.
